There were so
many of these gifts.
"There's enough for forty babies," Deborah told her father. "What on earth
am I to do, to avoid hurting anyone's feelings? And isn't it rather awful,
the way these inequalities will crop up in spite of you? I know of eight
tenement babies born down there in this one week. How much fuss and
feathers is made over them, and their coming into the world, poor mites?"
Roger smiled at his daughter.
"You remind me of Jekyll and Hyde," he said.
"Father! What a horrible thought! What have Jekyll and Hyde to do with me?"
"Nothing, my dear," he answered. "Only it's queer and a little uncanny,
something I've never seen before, this double mother life of yours."
* * * * *
It was only a few days later when coming home one evening he found that
Deborah's doctor had put her to bed and installed a nurse. There followed a
week of keen suspense when Roger stayed home from the office. She liked to
have him with her, and sitting at her bedside he saw how changed his
daughter was, how far in these few hours she had drawn into herself. He had
suspected for some time that all was not well with Deborah, and Allan
confirmed his suspicions. There was to be grave danger both for the mother
and the child. It would come out all right, of course, he strove to
reassure himself. Nothing else could happen now, with her life so
splendidly settled at last.
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